


The Gun.  The Choice.

by thatsrightdollface



Series: Gothamstuck/Gothamswap Stories [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Hiveswap
Genre: Assassination plot, Batman AU, Complicated Relationships, Crossover, Humanstuck, Humanswap?, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, more swearing than in actual Hiveswap Act 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 19:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15780939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Gotham City was full of scheming, dangerous types – whatever flavor of criminal you wanted to read awful newspaper articles about, really.  Xefros Tritoh and his boyfriend Dammek were mostly concerned with just one villain at the moment, though.  She called herself the Heiress – daughter of the infamous “Empress” who was usually off fighting Superman in space and trying to conquer planets, if you believed her Twitter updates.





	The Gun.  The Choice.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there~ Thanks so much for clicking on this story!! I hope you like it, if you read it. I think a lot about Batman AUs... A LOT about Batman AUs.... :P
> 
> Have a wonderful day!

Gotham City was full of scheming, dangerous types – whatever flavor of criminal you wanted to read awful newspaper articles about, really, from ridiculous (Kite-Man) to terrifying (Scarecrow) to that uncanny, laughing space people like the Joker messily sliced out in between.  Xefros Tritoh and his boyfriend Dammek were mostly concerned with just one villain at the moment, though.

She called herself the Heiress – daughter of the infamous “Empress” who was usually off fighting Superman in space and trying to conquer planets, if you believed her Twitter updates.  She had decided she owned Xefros’s neighborhood pretty early on in his life, and the fact that Batman hadn’t swooped in out of the primal night to take her out yet pissed Dammek off to no end.  That was why one of the songs on their protest band’s latest EP was called “Batman Get off Your Ass,” after all.  Yeah, bridges were routinely melted and the air was often smoggy with Joker gas – yeah, the Court of Owls had sent their thawed-out zombie Talons to kill a lot of people not too long ago.  But the Heiress had been jacking stuff up for years, now.  She kept to her streets, to her hunting ground, sure, so a lot of Gothamites would probably never have to deal with her.  Maybe Batman didn’t realize she existed, which Dammek didn’t think was much of an excuse given that he was _the actual Batman._

The Heiress spent all her time in her personal play room, where the alleys were too often full of bodies her people had dropped off for the Dollmaker to collect and pay for.  She’d step out over their corpses and saunter away, high heels clicking, leaving a splatter of bloody footprints behind her.  Xefros had seen her do it, once, hiding with his back jammed into a wet, crooked brick wall.  Trying to become nothing but shadows the way Batman did, as if he wasn’t just soft and awkward and bringing home snacks for a movie night.  He’d been able to hear his heart in his head; there were grocery bags clenched so tightly in his hands it would be hard to pry the plastic off his palms when he finally got to Dammek’s.  The Bat Signal had been out that night and everything, but the Heiress wasn’t even afraid.  It was like she didn’t think she had any reason to hide.

Everyone Xefros knew lived under the Heiress’s shadow, always aware that she was probably watching them.  They had to keep portraits of her on at least one of their walls, and the portrait eyes would follow them wherever they went.  Her sharp smiles and glitter-paint lips would stretch wider when they messed up, somehow.  That would always mean she was coming for them.

People disappeared, when they crossed the Heiress.  Sometimes her goons got them – these former Joker Cult lackeys she’d gotten on her payroll, for instance, or else some hulking, merciless types with spiky metal masks and no eyes.  Everybody had to pay her tribute or else get their stuff set on fire, or their pets killed, or their cars messed with so they’d explode.  The whole neighborhood knew it, just the same as they knew she might just decide to pull any of that crap for no reason at all.

The Heiress had her rules, and following them was really the best bet to keep yourself and people you cared about safe.  You couldn’t leave the neighborhood for longer than a couple days at a time, for instance, and you couldn’t call or go near the GCPD for any reason.  You couldn’t pay off any different Gotham crooks, even if Two-Face’s coin read that he should break all your bones if you didn’t.  You couldn’t ignore five of her social media posts in a row, and you couldn’t complain about her online, at least not by name.

The list went on like that.  Xefros had had it memorized almost as long as he could remember.

After Dammek uploaded their first few songs to the internet, Xefros was _sure_ the Heiress’s people were going to come for them.  He hadn’t been able to sleep for days and days.  Those songs were titled things like “Friendly Warning” and “Blood Boils (On Her Streets),” so it wasn’t like people couldn’t put the pieces together if they tried.  It wasn’t like _Batman_ wouldn’t have been able to put the pieces together, too, if he listened to at least one track and used some of his detective magic on hints Dammek had edited in about street signs and the names of the disappeared.

It wasn’t until Dammek decided the Batman wasn’t going to do anything – didn’t care enough to _get it_ – that he started putting together the gun.

And this wasn’t like the club Xefros’s slow moving, sleepy-eyed dad kept propped up in his closet, either.  Wasn’t like the handguns in people’s nightstand drawers, or the pepper spray in their purses, carried around everywhere ‘cause any call to the GCPD about the Riddler or whatever would inevitably end up with murder clowns climbing out of their neighborhood villain’s portrait at night.  This was a gun that _really_ went against the Heiress’s rules.  It was why Xefros and Dammek had been going out scrounging in places they weren’t supposed to be for a while, by that point, and that’s not even counting the times Dammek must have gone skulking around by himself.  To more dangerous places, probably, places he didn’t think Xefros would be able to take.  (As if that made it any easier imagining Dammek there alone, with his shades on in the dark.  Wearing dirty socks and a dirtier smile and absolutely, absolutely tempting fate.)

See, they were building a gun that would both defy Batman and be built from Batman’s own technology – a perfect “screw you” to just about everything, as Dammek put it.  They were even going to make sure to plate it with one of his genuine bat-insignias on the side, all crossed out and rebranded.  Dropped at the scene of the crime – at the scene of the Heiress’s assassination – on purpose, so people could see it _wasn’t_ Batman.  No, just someone else who’d given up on him.  Dammek figured his new favorite superhero, the Red Hood, would get the point of something like that.

Batman could cloak himself, and move like dripping water through the darkness.  Batman was soundless, and a lot of his tools had ridiculous technology in them that would make a thing levitate, maybe, or turn bubblegum into water resistant foam traps, or get something teleported back to wherever he and his army of sidekicks generally hung out.  Sometimes stuff of his ended up forgotten in evidence bins at Arkham Asylum.  Sometimes clashes with creatures from other planes and worlds left interesting treasures behind, which got carted off to research labs in places like Wayne Enterprises.  Xefros and Dammek had stolen enough gear from around Gotham – from the actual Penguin, one time, even, when they’d snuck into his casino wearing butler costumes and pretending to be staff – that they had a gun put together that could shoot through whatever the Heiress might be wearing.  From a clubbing dress to magical Atlantean armor, any bullet shot from that thing would scorch right to her heart.

And it would be silent.

And it would be quick.

And it would inject her with some stolen Scarecrow venom, too, so she’d die about as terrified as she’d made everyone else.

Dammek would shoot the Heiress himself – he insisted on that part – so best case scenario they’d get to meet and team up with the Red Hood someday, and worst case scenario Xefros had promised to sing a really inflammatory, furious song at his funeral.  Or, you know, visit him all the time in prison and try to sneak him junk food and other shit he wasn’t supposed to have.

To be completely, traitorously honest, part of Xefros was still hoping Batman might swoop down from the rafters – a dramatic entrance at the last possible second, maybe – and sort the whole thing out smoothly.  Maybe Gotham’s Knight had something in mind for the Heiress, after all…  Maybe he’d send Dammek home with a stern, only-probably-human sort of warning, and all would be well.

Dammek would’ve had something snide and frustrated to say, if he’d known Xefros was thinking like that.  It was the truth, though, even if Dammek _had_ gotten Xefros to promise not to trust in the Batman, anymore…  Just like he’d gotten him to promise not to cry too much, or freak out from his spot waiting in the car a little ways away from where the Heiress made her grand Announcements.  Dammek really loved Xefros’s smile, apparently, and he kept on saying to cheer up.

Dammek said he was a pretty fast runner, even though Xefros wasn’t completely sure he was.  He said they were finally getting something done, instead of standing still with the need to fight back like a tangible ache spreading inside them.  Cheer up, they were about to change Gotham for the better.

This “cheering up” thing was much easier said than done – and it felt really stupid, if Xefros was honest with himself.  Stupid enough to burn in the back of his throat like a rage he wasn’t sure what to do with, or like he was going to throw up…  But Xefros listened to Dammek, in the end.  That was the way their relationship had always been, as long as he could remember.  He probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere near someone like the Penguin if he hadn’t been following Dammek’s battle drums.  He probably wouldn’t have thought to harvest the Batman’s lost technology, and he may not have even known what an “autotune mic” was.  That would’ve been some sort of different life, right?

The plan was to go after the Heiress while she was making her Announcements, yeah, which she did on a grimy stage she’d plated over with gold and fuchsia crystals like the ones she wore strung up her arms and dripping down her neck and even worked into the heels of her shoes.   Dammek was going to get her when she inevitably pulled herself away from the crowd to check her social media profiles.  She did this maybe twelve, thirteen times an Announcement, obsessively checking in on anything people had to say about her awful jokes, about her endless stream of uploads.  She’d raise up a finger like “just a sec” to the waiting crowd, many of which knew they were scheduled to either die or kill for her that night.  And one of the stage hands – their band’s biggest fan, as fate would have it – would have smuggled Dammek up nice and close to her.  Within the panels of the wall; within the curtains moving slow and silky as ocean water.

No matter what happened, that fan was going to record what Dammek did next, and then all the world could see it if they wanted to.

Dammek had described the plan to Xefros so many times.  He’d painted elaborate pictures of himself grinning rakishly at the crowd from behind his homemade mask, maybe offering some kind of action movie one-liner.  He was only there for the Heiress.  He was there because Batman wasn’t.

He would shoot the Heiress if he could, next, and then maybe her guards would shoot him right back.  Or maybe they’d still have some of the Heiress’s strange magic in them and he’d find himself twitching on the stage floor or ripping his own neck open.  Or maybe he’d duck out behind the curtain again, and run like all the hordes of hell were after him out backstage and through the staff door.

That is, unless the Batman showed up.

Which Xefros only sort of secretly believed might possibly, _possibly_ happen.

The night before they were planning to finally bust out the gun in something other than a practice round versus some cans in an alley, without all the arcane Batman-y pieces put in, yet – the night before they were going to put their plan into action and get rid of the monster haunting their corner of Gotham – Xefros texted Dammek so many worried, apologetic messages that eventually Dammek gave up and climbed in through his window.  Dammek didn’t generally move as quietly as the Batman, so Xefros heard him coming – heard him swearing at the pigeon shit on the apartment fire escape, saw him wiggle inside with the wind in his hair and dirt smeared onto his hoodie.  There were sirens in the air, outside, and something smelled like burning.  Maybe a barbecue – maybe worse.

“See?  Look, I’m fine,” Dammek announced, trying for a solid poker face.  “Don’t need to miss me, yet.”  He tracked rain water and dirt in with him, smearing over Xefros’s just-cleaned carpets.

Xefros didn’t know how to say anything about it, but he knew Dammek looked tired, looked worried.  They’d been together pretty much their whole lives, so if anyone could read Dammek’s expressions it would be him, right?  His skin was ashy and exhausted under the eyes – his acne was worse than usual, like he hadn’t washed his face in a while.  Xefros put on an action movie Dammek had left over at his place a while back, and angled his tiny, flea market TV so they could see it from the bed.  He held Dammek around the middle, lying on their sides…  He smelled his citrus-y shampoo and kissed the back of his neck.

Dammek was stiff, at first, stiffer than usual.  He tended to treat Xefros’s apartment like it was just an extension of his own, but that night it took him a little while to stop twitching his leg all restlessly, to stop squeezing Xefros’s wrist like he was holding on for dear life.  There were a few more on-screen explosions, and a few more ominous screams and crashes from outside the window.  And then Dammek shifted his feet under the covers so they could warm up against Xefros’s legs.  Yeah, that was about right.  His toes were freezing.

The last thing Xefros saw before he fell asleep was the shadow of his potted plant on the wall, stretching like arms, reaching up and up and up.  Like it was crying out for help, in that moment, as the last of the credits played and Dammek breathed slow and soft beside him.  The last thing Xefros thought was about what things might have been like if he and Dammek had been born someplace like Metropolis, where they might’ve made music about what going to school had been like, music about philosophies and sports and just living.  Where there couldn’t have been a portrait of the Heiress out in the living room, waiting for one of them to slip up so she could take a selfie with their torn-up corpse.

The few times Xefros had suggested they write a song about something other than the Heiress, other than the neighborhood where they had been born and all the death around them there, Dammek had laughed like he was making a joke.


End file.
